Celebrity guests lining up for 'Kumars at No 42' return in January

As the Duck Dynasty-clan will, hopefully, soon disappear from both telly AND its place as one of the trending topics on Twitter, it looks like the Kumar-clan will soon return to television after a seven-year break. The International Emmy and Peabody Award-winning comedy/talk show hybrid The Kumars At No. 42 will return beginning 15 January on SKY1 HD in the UK. Returning will be Sanjeev Bhaskar, Vincent Ibrahim and Meera Syal.

The part scripted, part improvisation series, which ran on the BBC for 7 seasons and 53 episodes, centered on three generations of a British Indian family. Sanjeev Bhaskar played the thirty-something son, Sanjeev, whose parents (Madhuri and Ashwin Kumar) both simultaneously supported and made fun of his dream of being a talk show host by building a TV studio onto the back of their home.

Weekly celebrity guests were usually greeted with fanfare at the family’s front door, sometimes making a pit-stop on the living room couch for a quick taste of Madhuri cooking, Ashwin’s questioning and a bit of drooling over by Sanjeev’s grandmother, Ummi. The bulk of the show then moved to the back garden/television studio for a chat with Sanjeev while his parents and grandmother fired off a steady diet of inappropriate questions from the couch.

As with the original, the new six-part series will host a who’s who list of guests, including Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Chevy Chase and Broadchurch‘s Olivia Colman. Guests lined up for the rest of the series include Ray Winstone (Great Expectations), Rupert Everett (Parade’s End), Diana Rigg, Richard E Grant, Elizabeth McGovern (Downton Abbey), James Corden (Gavin & Stacey, The Wrong Mans) and former original Monty Python member, Terry Gilliam. In the new series, the family now lives in a flat behind a homewares and gift shop that the father runs.

A bit of Kumars trivia for your use in any upcoming holiday parties. The reference to house number 42 in the title of the series was deliberate, paying homage to the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and Everything in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.

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From your host, Bill Young

The Brits produce some of the best shows on television. As Vice President of Television Programming at KERA (Dallas/Ft. Worth), I have a job that affords me the opportunity to screen and evaluate much of the available British television catalogue for possible broadcast to American PBS audiences like you. And through this site, I share new programs and UK television news with you, so check back often!

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@RJKelley1@keratx Has to be the Christmas Lunch episode. Then again, the manger scene is pretty darn funny! Yours?,Dec 11